Various: UNKLE - Sweet Science, Alternative Press November 1998By: Adam HeimlichThe men of UNKLE – DJ Shadow and James Lavelle – overcame interpersonal tension to produce a heralded aural film featuring cameos by the Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, Radiohead’sThom Yorke, Beastie Boys’ Mike D and Many more. Adam Heimlich reviews the friction.Steve Finan, the co-owner of Mo’ Wax Records, says he’s "been playing Henry Kissinger" all week. He and UNKLE – the duo of London-based Mo’ Wax founder James Lavelle, 24, and Californian DJ Shadow, 26 – have been on a press tour that’s taken them through Paris, Tokyo, L.A., and now New York, all in the last seven days. But Finan hasn’t been speaking with any ambassadors. The diplomacy is for Messrs. Lavelle and Shadow, who have just completed Psyence Fiction (Island/Mo’ Wax) – an album like no other. It’s surprising that such a piece of work could have been created by two guys who don’t even get along. Finan assures me that they do, adding that in a moment I’ll understand.And he’s right. Neither Shadow nor Lavelle got much sleep the previous night – they’d arrived in New York well after midnight – but our breakfast-time meeting finds them in polar-opposite states of mind. Shadow, a.k.a. Josh Davis, is languid, Lavelle almost frantic. Finan, 10 years older than Lavelle and his partner since 1993, is English too, but he speaks fluent American. Laid-back yet alert, he’s become expert at translating messages across the gap that separates the men called UNKLE."The quieter Josh gets, the more neurotic James gets," he explains. "When Josh is at his most mellow, James gets paranoid." To illustrate, Finan does a quick impression of his worried partner: "‘I must have something to piss him off, but I don’t know what it was!’"Maybe he needn’t have fretted so much, but Lavelle’s energy wasn’t spent in vain: Three years in the making, Psyence Fiction is an awesome achievement. DJ Shadow, after soberly pointing out that only half that time was spent actually working on the album, admits, "This record couldn’t have been without [Lavelle]." Still, Shadow created 100 percent of UNKLE’sshare of the album’s music, collaborating with Lavelle’s dream team of vocalists: Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, the Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, Beastie Boys’ Mike D, Badly Drawn Boy and others. Guest instrumentalists include Jason Newsted, bassist of Metallica, and Wil Malone, the one-time Iron Maiden producer who went on to arrange the string sections in Massive Attack’s "Unfinished Sympathy."At Shadow’s insistence, Psyence Fiction contains a guest rhyme by the preternaturally gifted Kool G. Rap – acknowledged as the first MC to spin tales of mafia-style intrigue in hard rhymes. Through Lavelle’s vision and Shadow’s skill, all of these unique characters come together on the album like a cast of seasoned ensemble players.Because Shadow and Lavelle were interviewed separately, their disparate temperaments almost seem like mirror images of each other. They seem to view music through opposite ends of the same lens. For instance, both speak passionately about hip-hop – especially its early, experimental years. But Lavelle’s vision of it is telescopic – awestruck from afar – while Shadow’s eye is atomizing and scholarly."I was a Hoover [vacuum] for hip-hop culture," recalls Shadow of his youth. "I would study every aspect of every record." What began as an unusual pre-teen obsession for a suburban white kid ("In 7th grade," Shadow recounts, "I used to run into people who wanted to fight me because I listened to rap") grew into a chance to alter the course of hip-hop history. With his 1996 Mo’ Wax album Endtroducing….., the grown-up Shadow set out to remind the rap nation that beforeits stars had Money, Power and Respect, the culture was more about Ideas, Talent and Know-how. Heavily orchestrated and almost wholly without vocals, the album was stridently futuristic. Endtroducing…. aimed to be expressive – both visually and emotionally – in a way that beats and samples hadn’t been since Afrika Bambaata spun gold from threads of German electronica and urban-American funk.According to Lavelle, "What Shadow’s very good at is bringing a very focused opinion to a record – and a very sort of outside, unemotional attachment when working with others. He’s very good at interpreting my ideas and throwing in his own stuff to kinda create a constant balance."Lavelle didn’t write, perform or mix any music for the UNKLE album. He just sort of directed it. Lavelle’s skills are conceptual – as Shadow melds shards of hip-hop history into tight tracks,Lavelle thinks divergently, working ever outward from the notions that inspire him. To him, the genesis of hip-hop "was just taking all the good music and getting rid of all the crap. It’s like the idea of graffiti," he continues. "That was all about making your place better. It was always about taking what you could find because it wasn’t just there – you had to go and get it."Until Psyence Fiction, the most vivid illustrations of Lavelle’s far-reaching, go-out-and-get-it aesthetic were Mo’ Wax’s Headz compilations. They consist of two volumes – a total of five CDs – of what Lavelle considered the finest in beat-and-sample music. The collection proved Lavelle’s willingness to transgress genre boundaries in search of what the Headz 2 liner notes called "an earphone mindfuck." Headz drew from artists on competing U.K. labels (DJ Food, Massive Attack), American rock (Tortoise, Folk Implosion) and rap (Jungle Brothers, Beastie Boys, Dust Brothers), and the insular European jungle scene (Photek, Alex Reece), as well as Mo’ Wax’s own catalog (DJ Krush, Money Mark, Peshay).Also turning up on Headz 2 were tracks by the old U.N.K.L.E. – Lavelle with childhood friend Tim Goldsworthy and Japanese mixologist Masayuki Kudo, from the group Major Force. This version of U.N.K.L.E. cooked up a heralded 1994 EP, The Time Has Come. Its title track and "Garage Piano" – an original Lavelle-Goldsworthy-Kudo composition with Money Mark on keyboards – are high points of the Headz 2 compilation. In 1996, according to Lavelle, he and Goldsworthy "went our separate ways. We’d grown up together since we were 8 years old," he says, sounding troubled. "Things just changed. Musical opinions changed."Shadow’s association with U.N.K.L.E. began in ’95, when Lavelle asked him to record some demos in Los Angeles with Mario Caldato Jr., the Beastie Boys’ producer. The early effort ended in frustration for Shadow, who found Lavelle’s project plan hopelessly vague.But the following summer, while in England to finish Endtroducing…., Shadow worked on three Psyence Fiction tracks. Among them was the song featuring Richard Ashcroft, "Lonely Soul." At the time Ashcroft wrote and delivered his vocals, his band, the Verve, didn’t exist – they’d broken up. The success of Urban Hymns will probably help UNKLE’s sales, but it’s unlikely to do much for their credibility. "People are gonna think we just went out and got the big names…" Shadow muses, letting the thought just dangle. He doesn’t seem all that concerned, really. Lags happen. But it’s easy to see that if anything annoys DJ Shadow, it’s being delayed."When I get in the studio I like to just go. I don’t like to hang out. And I don’t like to have people coming by," he says, pronouncing those last two words with audible quotation marks, as if finding the phrase ridiculous. "It’s too chaotic, people playing video games and stuff. When I go in the studio I like to focus and concentrate, ‘cause I don’t think good records happen by accident. I think it happens with concentration and thought – especially when it comes to samples."Work on Psyence Fiction resumed in May of 1997. This time the DJ had his way – the pair worked steadily on the UNKLE record until it was finished some 13 months later. "Lonely Soul" ended up being the album’s centerpiece. It’s almost nine minutes long, with three movements. It features an original composition for strings by Wil Malone ("our Obi-Wan Kenobi," according to Shadow), performed by the London Session Orchestra and twisted into a sort of bearded-lady magnificence by the UNKLE juggernaut.For Lavelle, the director, Shadow’s air of deep concentration united his hand-picked cast into a coherent, immersive whole. Psyence Fiction, says Lavelle, "needed to be an experience rather than [a series] of singular tracks…. To achieve that it had to be a lot more focused, though I wanted to try and bring in the best people for every part. Like the way you put together a film: You want the best cameramen, the best special-effects company…"For Shadow, Lavelle’s ambition was a vehicle for creating something entirely new. Even the straight-up hip-hop tracks on Psyence Fiction sound deeper and broader than 99 percent of what passes for "modern" or "urban" on the radio. "James really put himself on the line," remarks Shadow, "Saying things like, ‘I really want to do a string section ‘cause nobody ever said I couldn’t.’" Shadow leans back in his chair and does something the other half of UNKLE, never does – he pauses to reflect. "I wouldn’t have made a record like this," he says, "but that’s exactly why I wanted to do it.""I definitely don’t wanna be walking around screaming that this is a hip-hop record. I don’t feel like it is, really. Then again, y’know, if hip-hop is all I listened to growing up, then what else could it be? I follow the lessons of people like Afrika Bambaata and Grandmaster Flash – because that’s who I heard when I was young and impressionable. The lesson they taught is that music is what brings people together."SAY UNKLE: Creative cuts from the cut creators.UNKLE, "The Time Has Come"(Mo’ Wax, 1994)A trip-hop classic whose languorous, seductive groove possesses a subliminal tension. The remixes by Portishead and Howie B may be even better than the original (the latter’s samples Silver Apples and Terry Riley).UNKLE, "Berry Meditation"[Suburbia OST](DGC, 1997)Written with Money Mark and two members of Major Force, this is a lysergically dubwise journey animated by samples of some mystic guru waxing cosmic and early-‘70s electronic duoTonto’s Expanding Head Band’s glinting synth tones.UNKLE, "Garage Piano"[Headz 2 compilation](Mo’ Wax, 1996)Woozy, 4 a.m. come-down track enlivened by fat kettle drums, DJ Kudo’s scratches, theremin and Money Mark’s keyboard.TORTOISE, "Djed (UNKLE’s Bruise Blood Mix)"[remixed](Thrill Jockey, 1998)UNKLE compress Tortoise’s 21-minute post-rock classic to eight minutes of tranced-out, Steve Reich-like organ chords while bringing the complexly metered drums to the fore. Also features effective samples of Reich’s "Come Out."